Sending e-mail from the road

Q. I am having trouble sending e-mails when staying in motels. My ISP is Consolidated and I use Outlook Express. I can connect using the motel’s Internet and receive messages without a problem but when I try to send anything out it fails. Do you have any idea or suggestion as to what my problem may be?

A. Back in the early days of the Internet, things used to be a lot more open and freely accessible. All you needed for e-mail was an account to log in and check your messages on the inbound (POPmail) server and the the name of the outbound (SMTP) server.

Your messages and access to them was simply controlled by the user name and password for the for the account on the POPmail server, but anyone anywhere could connect to the SMTP server to send messages.

Unfortunately, senders of junk e-mail (spammers) soon discovered that they could connect to just about any SMTP server they wanted and push their unwanted e-mail through them. This was a common practice and was helpful in hiding the spammers’ identity.

Eventually Internet providers realized that they had to plug this hole to prevent their SMTP servers from being exploited in this manner and one of the more common solutions was to limit the use of the SMTP server so that it could only be used by customers connected to the service.

In your case, Consolidated lets you send mail all the live long day as long as you are connected to Consolidated. But when you travel you could potentially be getting your Internet access from any number of Internet providers.

What is happening is that when you go to send an e-mail from the motel your ISP sees you connecting from an outside network and blocks you from sending a message.

Many Internet providers offer the ability to authenticate to the SMTP server using your login credentials. Check with them to see if there is a setting you can change in your e-mail program to allow you to send messages while traveling.

Also, most internet providers offer a web client you can access from any Internet connected computer that will allow you to send and receive e-mail without having to jump through any hoops. Again, check with your ISP to see if they offer this service.